Kempon Hokke Kai: True Dharma Teachings for The Age of Mappo

Sun, 17 May 1998 16:25:15 CEST - All right, listen up all you goddamn liberals and free-thinkers, cause I'm only gonna say this once, & I'll probably be dead before I have a chance to say it again. And don't call me paranoid, cause I'm not. Every fucking word of this is true, and once you finally believe it, you'll just as soon shoot the next counter-clerk for asking if you really give a shit whether you get paper or plastic. The goddamn Religious Right is all over us, slowly infiltrating our major corporations, our religions, our hotel chains, fast food outlets, data processing plants, local & regional governments, publishing houses, entertainment conglomerates, our press and media - you name it. Slowly litigating into our beings what it's OK to eat, drink, talk about, laugh at, smoke, pray to, kiss, and think about in the dark quiet of our rooms. Slowly, though. Not like jack-booted storm troopers. Not just yet. But with unrelenting creeping slowness as they impose their hypocritical moral values as shackles upon what's left of the free world. Slowly enough so that most don't notice, others don't care to notice, and others willingly offer up their hands and minds to the bondage of the individual spirit all in the name of some crap like "The Common Good". Look around you, Pal. Neo-Nazi Ken-Doll Mall Zombies. And their grunt-labor red-necked henchmen -- all around you. Step out of the inner city and you'll find them everywhere. All looking at you like you're the poor fool who's going to Hell. Well, if it's up to them, you will! A Big-Ass Hell, right here on God's little ball of spit. A Hell that they've created for all of us. And where will they be? In their tunnels under the ground. Stocked with food, bibles, weapons, computers, generators, and instruments of torture more insidious than your worst shit-infested nightmares. All waitng for God's Armageddon, a concept some asshole dreamed up centuries ago just to keep us all constantly looking over our shoulders, a concept that they want more than anything to be the ones to put into reality. And who pays for all this? Not the slime-asses who'll be hiding down there when all the shit hits, but all those blue-hair dupes and lackeys, slaves to the blasphemies of the Church. (hell, any Church - pick one) Pinhead paranoids who truly believe that a penthouse suite in the hereafter can only be purchased by pledging their kids' inheritance to some fucking telethon. Fear, manipulation, government-funded ignorance, our addiction to authority, and our church-sponsored self-loathing have created a cancerous, festering black spot on our souls more insidious than any cum-shot or narcotic you could name right now. Just take a look at the population nestled in the chafe of the Bible Belt: The sunken chin. That vague 'Down's Syndrome' glare in the eyes. Is it any wonder that Christian Fundementalism is the religion of choice where genetic in-breeding is the norm? Who else could fall for such superstitious backwards bull-shit hocus pocus? And the boys at the top want it that way! Our Church leaders, our industry leaders, our elected officials... take a look at the paper: cover up, cover-up, cover-up. Every day! And we're only seeing one-tenth of one percent of what's really going on behind our asses. These corporate fascists are tired of covering up, and they're working tirelessly to create a world where they can pull their shit off openly, in front of us, around us, and on us; and he who dares speak up will either be killed outright or whisked off to some detainment center for experimentation. Right-wing fanatic Roman Catholic dictators laundering their cocaine cartel money by tithing it to the Vatican Bank! Our own CIA funding it's covert activities by selling cocaine hijacked from independent producers. No one's hands are clean. The top of the pyramid is covered with shit and blood. Their shit, and our blood. Litton Industries. They created the AIDS virus years ago in a government lab run by a former Nazi pardoned by George Bush's father when he was Senate majority leader back in the 40's. Yes! From the same U.S. Government that tested nuclear fallout and Agent Orange on its very own soldiers, and then said they couldn't sue. We killed John Wayne! Why did the entire cast and crew of The Conqueror die of cancer after working down-wind from a nuclear test site? Who fucked our brains with LSD and then replaced it with cheap killer heroin just when folks were starting to enjoy it? It's all over us and there's no escape, and it's all done in the name of GOD! Their GOD! The GOD of power. The GOD of Domination. The GOD of fascist enslavement! The GOD of Death! Are we so complacent that we sat there in front of our TV dinners while we let it all go so far? We are surrounded by Nazi Ken-Doll Mall Zombies who know us to be the enemy. They want to turn us into lackey computer chips. Slaves to our Day Runners, our pagers, our car phones, our interest payments. To take every human variable out of being human so we can run faster and jump higher... for them! How'm I driving? If I'm not hustlin', call my boss. Report all suspicious behavior to the thought police... next we'll be having our social security numbers tatooed on our noses. The sum total of our achievements reduced to mason jars and urinalisis. No one escapes. No one is innocent by their rules, where freedom of thought and the sancity of the individual are crimes against the economy. This bull shit morality! This neo-Victorian soul enslaving puritanism, all done in the name of some guy with long hair who died nailed to a cross at 33. Jesus was a dissident!! He died for his ideas! He was a political prisoner! If I was his ol' man and I knew what would be coming down 2000 years later, I woulda drowned the fucker in the bathtub rather than let those self-righteous assholes destroy the planet IN HIS NAME!! Suck my dick, you pink-eared crew-cut mall zombies. I laugh at your yearbook picture you twerp geeks. And what about the Mormons? Why do we need caffeine free Coke? Because they fucking own the Coca Cola Company, Idiot! And take a look around the magazine stand at the Salt Lake City Airport. Why the fuck do you think you'll see Guns and Ammo but not Playboy? I'll tell you what's poor taste! I'll tell you what's pornographic! White supremacist soldiers of fortune ass wipes who'd rather have a gun in their face than a tit! That's pornographic! What's more of a sin against God? Sucking on a warm, soft, sensitive fleshy human orb that rolls the best of Mom, God, and your Lover all into the One, or sucking on a cold rod of blue steel that can blow your little pin-head all over the fucking wall? In fact, show me a tit that's killed someone, and I'll suck the damn thing myself. That's what I say... I say bring on the Killer Tits, you backwards conniving Mormon Assholes!!! What they do in God's name makes me wanna puke. Looking at me like I'm the freak because I don't wanna walk between their lines, and fill out their forms with their number two lead pencils. Slowly, as they replace us with polite, well-pressed computer chip clones of who we were with all the non-Christian parts taken out. Lobotomy by computer! Reducing whole entities to a series of zeroes and ones, and then taking out the ones that USA Today says we don't need. And then bio-engineering us to die of cancer just as we approach retirement age, or die of AIDS, which is what they would prefer if we should happen to swing 'that way'. Satan, it's your world all right. Run by lawyers and accountants, the courts and the military. And of course The Church. Jesus Fuck You on all the churches. Little Maloes that slipped over our heads and turned into collars that you hold the leashes to. While opportunistic real-estate trash sell our planet out from under us. Yes, Satan. I am your slave. I am yours. You own the rights to me until I die. But I am your unwilling slave. I will not go quietly, whilst I silently spit unseen bits of mucous onto your lemon mousse which I serve to you on my knees. Yes, I know that each day, more and more of my life is yours. Through religion, legislation, taxation, coersion, and corporate manipulation, you are turning this world into your Nazi Ken-Doll Mall Zombie playground. I have no escape but death, where I will wait to see you in Hell, where MY God, the true God of love will raise me up to his Kingdom, where we will stand together as one and piss on your fucking head! Se la! An' ay-man!!

Tue, 19 May 1998 01:27:10 CEST - Who is it that gets together in mobs and hunts down, tortures and kills people who are different from them? Who is it that teaches modesty, courtesy, and generosity but lives in depravity, rudeness, and greed? Who is it that can gather together the time, energy and money to murder millions and destroy cities, for the sake of a flag, deity or economic system? Not weirdos, not kooks or cranks or nuts. It's the "Normal" people who do those things.

It's the "Normal" people who believe there's only one "real world" and it's the one THEY'RE living in. It's the "Normal" people who kill each other over differences in that reality, and if someone can't trick themselves into ignoring the millions of inconsistencies or can't gloss over the gaping flaws in that reality-construct, or can't even pretend convincingly that they believe that flimsy and self-contradictory world is ALL TRUE, rather than have their own illusory stability undermined or accept that other ways of thinking and seeing might be valid, the "Normal" people imprison those "mentally ill," and experimentally destroy their personalities by use of drugs, electroconvulsion, and brain surgery.

I saw a letter to Ann Landers from a poor couple whose son took steroids and later began to think he was JFK. Unusually sensible doctors wouldn't agree with them that it was a Disease called Schizophrenia, and wouldn't keep the fellow locked up and drugged as his loving parents wanted. (They had looked up Schizophrenia in a book and thus knew all about it.) Their son eventually killed himself, and the parents cautioned all young men against the use of steroids. I felt sorry. Not for the son, who is now free, but for the parents who drove him to final escape by the continuing refusal of the validity of his primary goal in life, "to go to Washington and help people with their problems." Rather than take the time to teach their son to use his strange gift, they succumbed to their fear of the unusual and destroyed the creature they helped create.

It's the "Normal" way of thinking to label things and file them away so they don't have to be thought about any more. If "idea x" is labeled as "stupid" it can be discarded. All subsequently encountered ideas bearing any resemblance to "idea x" can also be so classified and discarded, saving valuable time and energy for watching TV or thinking about movie stars. If something new or different comes along, the "Normal" way is to classify it as quickly as possible according to the guidelines set down by reputable authorities so it may be conveniently and safely filed away. This might not be such a destructive system if it did not cripple or entirely halt the learning process, but once a "Normal" person learns to use this technique, consideration of new or unusual things or ideas is only necessary when the classification system itself fails or is too limited in scope to encompass the thing seen or thought.

It is the duty and function of "Normal" people to classify, label and file the whole of existence and experience. Sadly, a description of the nature of the object is frequently taken as a distillation of the essence of the object. In the unwritten sequel to the classic poem "The Blind Men and the Elephant," we go a thousand years further on the linear timescale to a world in which vast temple complexes have been built by the followers of each of the seven theoreticians and holy war is waged against all who dispute the fact that an elephant is very like a tree, a wall, or a rope. Even worse, cults arise venerating fans and ropes AS ELEPHANTS, and devotees plant bombs in the automobiles of those who insist that a wall is just a wall,and not an elephant at all.

It's the "Normal" way of thinking to believe that we call a thing by a name and classify it as a certain kind of thing because that is what it IS. Regardless of well-known classical allusions to roses and other names, "Normal" thinking dictates that name defines nature, that a thing is what you say it is and you say it is what it is because that's WHAT IT IS. "Normal" thinking disregards the fact that two different people can look at the same object in the same place at the same time, and reach two entirely different conclusions about the nature of that object: not because the object itself is variable or has two or more natures, but because each individual bases conclusions and deductions on the whole of experience and their likes and dislikes, or physical and emotional state at any given moment. Thus, one person may glorify as a symbol of the highest ideals of humanity the image of a man being tortured to death and brand "obscene" the image of a child with no clothes on, and someone else might consider such thought idiotic. Some persons may maintain their right to hold their own opinion based on their own tastes and experiences, and others might interpret that as a blanket condemnation of all they are, and fear for their lives ever after.

I don't wish it to be thought that "Normal" thinking is essentially a bad thing. Very few people actually require an open mind or the ability to reason in the course of their everyday lives. A donut-shop cashier does not need to consider the ethics of selling blobs of greasy dough, and a philosophical and ethical outlook would be an outright detriment to a nuclear warhead assembly plant worker or oil-company lawyer. It is vital for most people to continue to act "Normal." Without such behavior the wheels of commerce and progress would grind to a halt. The excesses which make life in this modern world so simple for those who are free from the confining systems of dissatisfaction and complaint would suddenly cease to be. Without the ridiculously expensive and painfully loud car stereos, the mindless repetition of pop-song lustmongery, elaborate hairdos, huge jewelry and ten-thousand-dollar wristwatches dangling before the sleepwalking hordes there would be no cheap crummy apartments, discarded art supplies, inexpensive healthfood, or good secondhand clothing.

For the most part, the existence of "Normal" behavior is a good thing for those who require nothing more. But for people who care about things or think about things, who examine their lives and their place in the world, acting "Normal" is insanity, a trap which leads to constant dissatisfaction and eventual destruction. Acting "Normal" for such people is hating, complaining, finding fault, holding grudges, being afraid, and limiting themselves to the small world of everyday existence, the world even "Normal" people pay most of their money to escape from by buying distractions, or getting loaded and laid as much as they can before they die.

When it is possible to choose not to live in the small world of reaction to stimulus, to act by choice and to choose the good, to see beauty and find enjoyment anywhere, there is no need to escape, no place or person to escape from. When emotional and physical states are seen as temporary and subject to will and choice, when the past is seen only as a picture in the mind and the future as a dream not yet dreamed, to live and to enjoy living become, not "Normal" but NATURAL, essential, a part of each individual nature.

POSTSCRIPT: This essay was written years before the wide public participation in internet. If it were being rewritten now it would certainly include thoughts to the effect that it is "Normal" people who critique the grammar or typography of literature which contains ideas they don't understand. It is "Normal" people who display the height of their intellectual and crative capacity by using the anonymity of a mailing address to take one-line wisecrack potshots at people who actually try to THINK about things and express those thoughts through imperfect physical interface. ...and so on, delineating some of the common ways that stupid intolerant people use to attempt to bring down to their own level anyone on the net who displays any earnestness or sincerity in the desire to make the world a better place for everyone.